Labour deputy leadership candidate Lucy Powell has dubbed fevered speculation around the possible return of Andy Burnham “kind of sexist”.
As the crisis facing Sir Keir Starmer continues to grow, there have been mounting calls from Labour backbenchers for the Greater Manchester mayor to return to Westminster politics and launch a leadership bid.
But asked about the possibility of such a return, Ms Powell said the conversation is “just a classic Westminster bubble obsession”.
She added: “You’ve got two strong women in an open and transparent contest.
“And instead of talking about the two strong women, everybody's talking about this being a sort of proxy war between two men, which, quite honestly, I find kind of sexist.”
Sir Keir is facing growing questions over his leadership of the Labour Party and the country after a disastrous fortnight, which saw the resignation of his deputy Angela Rayner and the sacking of his ambassador in Washington Peter Mandelson amid questions over his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
The PM is now facing increasing demands to explain what he knew and when over Lord Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein – and defend his decision to appoint the Labour grandee, forced to resign from government twice already.
And as the deputy leadership contest gets underway, with Ms Powell battling it out against Bridget Phillipson, some Labour MPs believe the only solution to the party’s woes would be a complete change of leadership.
A new campaigning group within the party, Mainstream, was launched by Andy Burnham last week and could become a vehicle for precisely that new direction.
The group says it is the home for Labour’s “radical realists” and is “serious about winning a democratic socialist future”.
Although she came second to Ms Phillipson in terms of nominations from Labour parliamentarians, polling suggests the Manchester Central MP has a significant lead among party members.
Ms Powell warned that Labour’s “mistakes” have given the impression that the party is “not on the side of ordinary people”.
In an interview with the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast, the former Commons leader praised the government’s “many achievements”, but said people had “lost sense” of Labour’s values and “on whose side we are governing”.
“Some of the mistakes that we’ve made, or some of the unforced errors, have given a sense that we’re not on the side of ordinary people”, she said.
Ms Powell, who was sacked by Sir Keir in the reshuffle following Ms Rayner’s resignation, said she would not want to return to the Cabinet, and would instead act as a “conduit” between the wider party and the Labour leadership.
While Ms Powell said Sir Keir had not given a specific reason for sacking her, she believed it may have been due to the “feedback” she gave the Cabinet from Labour MPs on issues such as welfare reform.
She said: “I thought I was doing the job I was supposed to be doing, but maybe that wasn’t feedback people wanted to hear.”
Freed from Cabinet collective responsibility, Ms Powell also urged the government to be “clearer” about wanting to scrap the two-child benefit cap – a significant issue for many Labour backbenchers.
Acknowledging that abolishing the cap may not be achievable immediately, she said the government should still be “working towards” it as “the single biggest policy we could do to address child poverty”.
Asked whether Labour was trying to “out-Reform Reform”, she urged her party to provide a “common vision” that could use the economy to “unite that progressive voter coalition” rather than “tacking one way or tacking the other”.
She said: “They might not say it like that, but a fairer economy that works in the interests of the many and not the few, and having a story to tell about whose side we’re on, whose interests we’re serving, unites that voter coalition.”
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